Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Mitchell, Timothy;Rao, Anupama;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4274724pmid: N/A

Gilmartin, David;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132797pmid: N/A

A study of the intersection of nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism in twentieth-century South Asia requires attention to how these concepts drew on imperial structures and on the notions of civilization that went with them. Gilmartin's brief response to Partha Chatterjee's article on the topic, “Nationalism, Internationalism, and Cosmopolitanism: Some Observations from Modern Indian History,” tracks the importance of imperial concepts of center and periphery in structuring both the nationalist movement in India and the movement for the creation of Pakistan during the interwar years. India Pakistan empire nationalism internationalism cosmopolitanism

Mastnak, Tomaž;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132809pmid: N/A

In this article, Mastnak responds to Partha Chatterjee's essay “Nationalism, Internationalism, and Cosmopolitanism: Some Observations from Modern Indian History,” engaging specifically with the work of Friedrich Engels, Friedrich List, and Karl Marx. nationalism internationalism cosmopolitanism colonialism

Saikia, Yasmin;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132821pmid: N/A

The connections among anticolonial nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism in the early twentieth century expand our understanding of the Indian freedom movement in new directions, beyond the activities and leadership of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. This essay continues the conversation on the connections between people, networks, and the internationalist outlook of revolutionary politics in the early twentieth century by focusing on five Muslim revolutionaries who, Saikia argues, played a pioneering role in launching the anticolonial struggle in the international arena. Although Saikia introduces the thought of five of these revolutionaries, she pays particular attention to two of them: Obaidullah Sindhi and Iqbal Shedai, investigating their strategies, sources of inspiration, and visions of freedom for India. freedom migration Muslims cosmopolitanism India

Maclean, Kama;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132833pmid: N/A

Kama Maclean's article responds to the analytical threads offered by Partha Chatterjee's “Nationalism, Internationalism, and Cosmopolitanism: Some Observations from Modern Indian History” by focusing closely on the dynamics leading to the passing of the Fundamental Rights resolution by the Indian National Congress at Karachi in 1931. A key moment in anticolonial thought, the resolution was many things: an uneasy fusion of ideologies to assuage a range of divergent political interests; a maneuver to prevent another split of the nationalist movement into radical and moderate factions; a gesture toward performing statehood; and a multiauthored but significant imagining of what an independent India might look like. An ostensibly nationalist document, the resolution—elements of which remain in the statement of rights in the Indian Constitution—demonstrates the influence of leftist internationalism and liberal cosmopolitan concerns in utopian interwar imaginings. Fundamental Rights Karachi Congress M. K. Gandhi Jawaharlal Nehru M. N. Roy

Bhagavan, Manu;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132845pmid: N/A

Bhagavan's article examines Mahatma Gandhi's ideas on nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism in the interwar period of the twentieth century. It argues that Gandhi was ultimately a progressive internationalist who sought to rally the world around the concept of a postnational global order. Gandhi internationalism interwar India nation-state postnational

Grovogui, Siba;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132857pmid: N/A

As both a response and a complement to Partha Chatterjee's observations on modern Indian history, this essay speaks to the heterogeneity of cosmopolitanism and its trajectories. It focuses specifically on political and cultural experiments in West and North Africa that over time generated norms of citizenship, subjectivity, and jurisdiction that Grovogui associates with cosmopolitanism. The essay proceeds from a historiography that is necessarily a conjecture, a logical construction based on incomplete information. The scholar of cosmopolitanism divorced from its European heritage can nevertheless overcome the limits presented by such an incompleteness through a hermeneutics based on observations and the materiality of the cultures, traditions, and processes that exist in Africa today. The suppositions involved in this form of argumentation are proper to public life and institutions still found in West Africa, which are themselves independent from practices and processes associated with the slave trade, Western imperialism, and colonialism. nationalism internationalism cosmopolitanism West Africa North Africa

Chatterjee, Partha;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132869pmid: N/A

In response to the discussion in this journal following the publication of “Nationalism, Internationalism and Cosmopolitanism: Some Observations from South Asian History”, this article looks closely at some methodological questions of comparative history. If the dissolution of the British Indian Empire is compared with that of the Ottoman, differences will emerge with respect to the historical formation of the national-popular in the European and non-European Ottoman provinces, the creation of modern state structures in British India, the linguistic foundations of the national imagination in India and international interventions in the Ottoman Empire. The degree to which mass political movements such as nationalism are amenable to the disciplinary methods of intellectual history or biographical studies is also doubtful. Finally, it is arguable that non-European pasts may contain resources for plausible cosmopolitical imaginings, but these must be subjected to critical debates within currently available discursive formations. nationalism internationalism cosmopolitanism comparative history

Wishnitzer, Avner;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132881pmid: N/A

The limited scholarship on late Ottoman nightlife focused mainly on street lighting and described it as a solution to the problem of darkness, the end of a dark age. However, as Wishnitzer shows in this article, the nightlife scene of the late nineteenth century did not develop linearly from darkened to illuminated nightlife; rather, the two modes of nocturnal leisure coexisted. Likewise, the new ways of “seeing through darkness” that were devised by the state developed alongside (rather than instead of) well-established patterns of communal surveillance. These patterns are evident in contemporary novels, which subjected nightlife to a literary “neighborhood gaze,” exposing and shaming protagonists who violated public morality. In this way, novelists warned against what they perceived to be the perils of the new night and advised their readers how to navigate it—how to be in the modern night without jeopardizing the morality, productivity, and integrity of the individual and of the Ottoman nation as a whole. Ottoman Empire night lighting time theater

Mestyan, Adam;

doi: 10.1215/1089201x-4132893pmid: N/A

This essay focuses on the month of Ramadan and its end celebration, ‘Id al-Fitr , the Festival of Breaking the Fast, in the Ottoman Arab provinces in the second half of the nineteenth century. What was the effect of new technologies and urbanization on these Muslim practices in their relationship to politics and the new public spaces? Building on recent scholarship, Mestyan argues that these were reconstituted as part of symbolic politics and served as a test period for using new technologies to synchronize collective action. He explores this process by historicizing the relationship between power and sound during Ramadan. Ramadan night studies urban Islam technology sound religion